Dead end for TN workers, business

Labor department needs a change in culture

At the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, officials are still looking for rock bottom.

Since the beginning of the year, we have witnessed the sudden resignation of the department's commissioner and her two top deputies; and the release of audit findings, including contract improprieties, failure to recoup millions of dollars in unemployment compensation overpayments and the fact that dead people were collecting unemployment.

When the drumbeat of bad news will end is hard to predict because, much as in the case of the Department of Children's Services, the Labor department has been getting it wrong for so long that it's hard to believe it's all just now coming to a crescendo.

And the problems caused by the department are not just someone else's problem. The state's unemployed feel it acutely when they try to deal directly with the department over claims problems or tax questions, but it also a matter of frustration for private employers that have struggled for years with Labor's inability to efficiently process claims.

The sheer amount of money lost to fraud and departmental error - $73 million over the past six years alone - has a broad if subtle impact on the lives of average Tennesseans. The cost of doing business badly doesn't simply go away.

With a interim commissioner just beginning to cope with Labor's mistakes, this should be a period of retrenchment. Instead, Gov. Bill Haslam is moving quickly to implement a controversial overhaul of Tennessee's workers' compensation system - much of which involves Labor and Workforce Development.

Regardless of whether you prefer the current system of handling workers' compensation claims in trial courts, or the governor's system of appointed administrative judges, no one will have confidence in the changes where the Labor department is involved.

To blithely move forward with its workers' compensation reforms suggests that the administration is overconfident in its decision-making - or that it doesn't think the problems with unemployment compensation are that important.

We think they matter a great deal. We also think choosing great executives matters. Those who have looked closely at Gov. Haslam's Cabinet choices since he was elected in 2010 have noticed that whenever the appointee was someone Haslam knew or when he was directly involved in the vetting, the commissioner has been considered a success. Labor Commissioner Karla Davis was not chosen in this way.

There is a remedy: Require members of the governor's Cabinet to undergo a confirmation process.

As for the Labor department, why not shift some of its tasks to another department? Is it not - as Francis Guess, a former labor commissioner under Gov. Lamar Alexander, suggested to The Tennessean's editorial board last week - that "labor" and "workforce development" are big enough jobs for departments of their own?

It's interesting to note that the Labor department bungled its responsibilities under the immediate past governor as well as the current governor, both of whom made their reputations on being successful in business. Logically, "labor" and "workforce development" should be their strong suits.

So far, we haven't seen it.

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Dead end for TN workers, business

Regardless of whether you prefer the current system of handling workers' compensation claims in trial courts, or the governor's system of appointed administrative judges, no one will have confidence